Dodgers Digest Los Angeles Dodgers Baseball Blog
The Dodgers (63-46) have been bad as of late, dropping four of their last five after a two game sweep by the San Diego Padres (59-51). They’re still 7-5 post All-Star break, but just finished up a disappointing 11-13 month of July. That was their first full month with a record under .500 since April of 2018, so it’s likely they pick things up sooner rather than later. The only thing possibly preventing that from happening is that they’ll need to hit better, pitch better, and get healthier. Easy enough. Gavin Stone will open up this weekend series in Oakland (45-65) up against the right-handed Joey Estes. This is likely the last time we’ll ever see the Dodgers play in the Oakland Coliseum, with John Fisher moving the franchise to Las Vegas in 2028.
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| 6:40 P.M. | Oakland | ||
| DH | Ohtani (L) | RF | Butler (L) |
| C | Smith | LF | Andujar |
| 2B | Lux (L) | CF | Bleday (L) |
| LF | T. Hernández | DH | Rooker |
| RF | Heyward (L) | C | Langeliers |
| 1B | Biggio (L) | 3B | Toro (S) |
| 3B | K. Hernández | 1B | Brown (L) |
| CF | Kiermaier (L) | 2B | Gelof |
| SS | Ahmed | SS | Schuemann |
| P | Stone (R) | P | Estes (R) |
With Freddie Freeman still out, and Mookie Betts, Tommy Edman, Max Muncy, Miguel Rojas, and Chris Taylor on the injured list, this is still a sad looking lineup. Kevin Kiermaier is very unlikely to help offensively, but it’s also exciting to watch a newly-acquired player arrive. Especially if they’re one of the best defensive outfielders the game has ever seen. Oakland has a young lineup that has been performing great as of late. Batting eighth for the A’s is Zack Gelof, the older brother of the Dodgers’ 2023 second round pick, Jake Gelof. Jake had a great start to his season in A-ball but has slowed down in High-A thus far. Hopefully he’ll climb through the minors and be in the big leagues at the same time as his brother in a couple years.
Here’s how these two offenses have performed thus far.
Oakland has the third best record in baseball since the beginning of July at 15-9, carried by the offense, with a league leading 136 wRC+ and .829 OPS in the month. Outfielder/Designated Hitter Brent Rooker has been unreal, with a 253 wRC+ in the month with 11 home runs and a 1.288 OPS. There were rumors that Oakland might move him at the trade deadline, but he might just be a staple of their future. Lawrence Butler has amazingly kept pace with Rooker, with a 1.210 OPS and 237 wRC+ in July, adding ten homers of his own. Rookie short stop Max Schuemann (149 wRC+), and catcher Shea Langeliers (134 wRC+) have both also been great.
The Dodgers’ offense hasn’t been particularly sharp in July, but they’ve still been solid as a whole with the tenth ranked wRC+ at 110. They’ve had an especially rough go in the strikeout department, with a 25.7% strikeout rate in the month, the seventh highest rate in baseball. That’s been a particularly bad struggle as of late in the absence of core players in the lineup. Since returning from the All-Star break, the Dodgers are leading baseball with an extremely high 28.6% strikeout rate in 12 games. That jumps up to a 31.5% strikeout rate over their last eight games, and since the series in Houston they’re running a 34.6% strikeout rate, averaging 13.6 strikeouts per game. Sure, they’ve had some winnable games squandered by the bullpen, but hitting .188 and striking out like prime Joey Gallo is not going to cut it.
James Outman has only logged 13 plate appearances post All-Star break, but has struck out in six of those (46.2%), as had Taylor in his 16 plate appearances (37.5%). Additionally, all of Kiké Hernández (33.3%), Nick Ahmed (32.0%), Will Smith (31.7%), and Andy Pages (31.1%) have struck out more than 30% of the time since the break, with Cavan Biggio (29.6%) right behind them. Eventually some of those guys won’t be on the team, but until reinforcements arrive it might continue to be ugly.
Kiermaier is starting in center field tonight, and while he does feature a lot of swing and miss this season with a 30.4% strikeout rate, the veteran outfielder is coming off a solid 2023 campaign. Last year he struck out at just a 21.1% clip which is right around league-average, and he had a .751 OPS and 106 wRC+ against right-handed pitchers, so the Dodgers will hope he can tap into some of that. His Statcast page isn’t exactly pretty, but it does highlight his obvious strength. Defense.
The defense is elite and might still be the best in baseball. His sprint speed of 28.8 ft/sec is tied with James Outman for the fastest on the team. He’s stolen just five bases this year, but I’m sure the team would be willing to let him loose a bit more as he’s been very successful the lat few seasons despite minimal attempts. He’s 5-5 this year after being 14-15 last year and 6-7 the year prior.
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Here’s how Stone and Estes compare. Stone’s ranks are among 85 starters with at least 100 innings.
Stone took the loss his last time out against Houston, as he continued his recent struggles. He allowed four runs on nine hits and two walks over six innings with just three strikeouts. Framber Valdez dominated the Dodgers’ offense, while Alex Bregman and Jon Singleton added home runs for Houston. He managed to get through six innings for the first time in July, but he ended the month with a 6.27 ERA, 6.16 FIP, and 1.93 WHIP through four outings. If the rotation had any support it might be a nice time to give him a bit of a rest, but the Dodgers just don’t have that flexibility right now. He threw a career high 131.2 innings last season over Triple-A and the majors, so he’s just a handful of starts away from surpassing that mark.
Estes had made 13 starts prior to his last outing, but was used in long relief in his last outing after Paul Blackburn returned from the 60-day injured list. The A’s proceeded to trade Blackburn, so Estes is now back in the rotation. He has a 4.92 ERA, but there’s a solid season mixed in there with two atrocious outings inflating everything. In his second appearance of the year, he allowed eight runs against the Astros in 3.2 innings, and on July 9 he allowed eight runs once again, this time against the Red Sox in 1.2 innings. If you remove those 16 earned runs over 5.1 innings, he has a 3.14 ERA over his other 66.0 innings pitched. Those clunkers absolutely did happen and he’ll have to figure out how to avoid those in the future. His best outing came against the Angels in the beginning of July, throwing a complete game shutout with just five hits allowed. Estes sits 92.6 mph on his four-seamer that he throws over half the time, going to an upper-70’s frisbee-esque sweeper that he throws 20.0% of the time as his primary breaking ball. He also features a low-80’s sharper slider, and a mid-80’s changeup that he throws exclusively against lefties. He’s just 22 years-old, and is likely to settle in as a mid or back of the rotation arm that relies on a solid fastball and good command.
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Kiermaier is in the starting lineup, while Amed Rosario is available off the bench.
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The 20 year-old lefty was promoted to Double-A following an eight inning no-hit bid last night. He’d allowed just three earned runs over his previous 34.0 innings with 37 strikeouts and is looking like the real deal. We’ll see how he fares against stronger competition, but it appears the Dodgers landed quite an impressive lefty in the Michael Busch trade.
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Not great, it’s looking like it might just be a lost year for Bobby Miller. Tough for him and also the team that was relying on him taking a step forward.
Reinforcements looking like they’re improving and getting closer.
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First pitch is at 6:40 p.m. PT on SNLA.
